Is there a time?

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Grief & Praise
#1

Is there a time when a highly educated person, begins to formulate ideas and beliefs based on what they have found to be real and true in their own life, as they have lived it, instead of basing their beliefs on the writings and thoughts of others who may also be doing the same thing?

I see so many references to the writings of academics here I sometimes wonder how many people are actually having genuine life experience that is shaping the way they view the world or if this world view is totally a product of academic research.

I’d really like to hear people’s own stories, not what book they read. I know I’ll get flack for this but I’m going to stick my neck out anyway. Believing that you understand foriegn cultures and concepts because you have read well documented literature on them is extremely sketchy.

I can say from my own lifes experience of doing ceremonies with people in the Plateau region and N. Plains, that very little of anything I ever read about those ceremonies showed much understanding of what is really going on. A lot of it wasn’t even close. I can’t pass it on to you either. You must have your own experience to have an understanding.

Unfortunately for those who say they just don’t have access to the real deal, reading written accounts of indigenous culture is not the next best thing, because it very well might be way off base.

People sometimes refer to NW Coast cultures and talk about Potlatches. I have not read a written account of what a potlatch is about that I would say presents a realistic understanding of what is going on.
The same goes for many other aspects of indigenous culture. A lot of the literature is BS that was written by people who didn’t understand what they were looking at or experiencing because they had no context to put it in.

For many years I knew people who were Sundancers. I would ask them about the ceremony and all of them would say the same thing. “If you want to know about the sundance, go to a sundance.” I can tell you now that 99.9% of everything I’ve seen written by non-Native people about the sundance completely missed the point. What Elders have written is deliberately vague.

When limited to reading about things we tend to see everything in terms of symbolism and metaphors. I heard an elder say that someone asked him to describe the symbolism behind his pipe. He said, this pipe doesn’t symbolize anything. This pipe does what it does. It is a direct connection to the Creative power of the universe. No symbolism involved. I don’t have faith in it, I don’t believe in it, I know it.

That’s what my teachers tell me about the ceremonies, they aren’t metaphors or symbolic, they are reality.

What I’d like to say here is please open up to a bigger, deeper possibility. Step out of the box. Try to get out of your head. Build a body of your own real life, close to the bone experience to guide the course of your life.

#2

Beautiful, moving, challenging, pick-me-up-and-shake-me, force-me-to-see-what-I-know, make-me-want-to-hide words, thank you heyvictor. These words really hit me in the gut, I am stuck in books, I know that, but oh, let me see how many excuses I can come up with. Deep down, said so many times but turned away from just as many, I have said what you just said.

I don’t know what hte answer is. Books are easy, books are condensed, books allow us to experience the studies of a lifetime. In that, and in the fact that they often force us to look where we wouldn’t otherwise, I think books have value. We could spend a lifetime getting the insight that some books give us and then we would have no lifetime to implement that insight. However, books are also so limiting, and, in a way an expression of everything that is wrong with our microwave culture. First hand experience is, of course, always preferable, but often oh so hard and time consuming to obtain - oh the excuses :(.

#3

many of us, meaning humyns in general, have become so disembodied that we wouldn’t know a direct experience if it was sitting on our face.

sometimes i think we are the real ghosts.

sometimes reading these symbolic oddities we call books, essays, the internet etc. i find them as thoughts. they speak thoughts of the actual, direct even tangible experiences i had already had before i read the book or even formulated it as a thought on my own. it is something i have experienced, or known, deep in my being, kind of like a remembering, but perhaps never as a ‘thought’ or series of language symbols type of remembering, actually, maybe, more like a somatic remembering.

belief has nothing to do with it, faith certainly doesn’t.

sometimes i feel like its all coming together, like a beautiful integration… and other times i feel like its all falling apart, like my armor from civilization falling away, and i feel again

alive, deeply and passionately, eyes wide open…and wider still, losing those lenses

#4

I’ve had this thought before too. I sometimes feel like this direction I follow right now, so intensely, towards rewilding, consumes me in order to rebuild me.

Then sometimes I think, this drive to gobble down information and “experience in a bouillon cube form” in a fierce effort to steal back my humanity from civilization as quickly as possible, largely by reading books and looking for knowledge outside myself and my own experiences seems like a symptom of the sickness I seek to heal from.

So far I’ve resisted the urge to throw out (burn? :P) all the books and just shut up and listen. to the quiet and all the sounds that make it up, the wind, myself–the voice telling me what to reach toward and follow might get louder. to go forward in the direction you speak of, heyvictor–seeking out experiences, and trust that, instead of looking to the authority of what someone else wrote.

did that make any sense at all? i feel fried, time to get off this dang box of misplaced bits of mineral soul.

oh, but first–thanks, heyvictor for speaking your mind. no flak from me. :slight_smile:

#5

I think that a lot of us bookworms don’t just swallow what others have “authoritatively” written without using critical thought and reflecting upon our own knowledge and experience. And “book” knowledge has its own value. It’s not everything, but it’s something. It’s also very easy to talk about on a medium like the internet.

Book, or intellectual, knowledge is an important stepping stone for a lot of people - it’s merely an access point, not an end in and of itself, and I think most rewilders understand that. Whether or not the “book talk” is meaningful to a person depends on the angle from which they’re coming to rewild.

I would not be rewilding if I hadn’t had the most meaningful experiences of my life in connection with nature. I’m not rewilding just because I read about it in a book.

However, I didn’t know that I had the option to rewild until I read about other people’s thoughts on civilization.

Thanks for hearing me out.

#6

BlueHeron,

Hmm, my last post left something out.

I didn’t mean to dis books as a source/resource–well, maybe a little–but the way in which I CONSUME them. Probably you and others don’t use the insane system I do–for some reason, I feel compelled to “catch up” after all my years of droning, asleep, in civilized dystopia.

So I follow nearly every lead I sniff out, borrow piles of books from friends and the library, and skim aggressively in the skinny bits of spare time I find for it. Sometimes I hit a real treasure, and read it for real. But I chew them up so quickly, the important parts come back to me later, after slowly soaking into me.

I meant to raise the question of whether I can (or even need or want to) go where I want to go without feeling the need to hit every book on my list,or look up/chase down every question I have (perhaps I’ve developed internetitis? = the expectation of instant gratification for every curiosity). Or just to keep in perspective, what portion of what I seek do those books really provide to me?

#7

Hey there Yarrow dreamer … What I’ve learned about myself is that a book is only meaningful if I read it when it becomes interesting. I used to force myself to read books I didn’t want to read anymore … I had wanted to read them at some point and I had assumed I would still want to read them later.

Does that sound like something you also struggle with?

#8

I don’t see why you need to differentiate. Don’t use books, don’t use the internet if these things don’t help you. They’re all experiences to me. They all come together and they’re all important. The feel of a floor of hemlock needles, the stench of petrol in a congested city when the wind dies, the cry of someone you know buried under conversation, the bold useless passage of truth in writing or literature–these things aren’t separate. I can see that you might be better without books and the like in a rich life. I live an empty and deadened life though, and I treasure all the things that come to me.

#9

Billy-
I respect your point of view on this, definitely, and I also notice that this looks like unsolicited advice aimed at folks writing other threads here.

Please keep to telling your own story. Most of this post does just that. Also if you wonder about why folks have chosen a certain path, you might ask them directly about it. As it stands, the shadow of judgement and advice hangs over this post, and I can see it doesn’t need that to say something important about your own life experience.

As always folks: for the sake of forum safety and welcome, please tell your story or ask a question, unless someone directly asks for your help.

I don’t want to derail this conversation, y’all can keep going, I just needed to nip that in the bud. Thank you for your stories, Billy, and everyone, I come here and continue to moderate because of them.

#10

I understand what your saying Willem.

#11

Willem, i think billy’s post is really relevant - that it resonates with alot of the people here. To me it presents clear questions, reminds me of things i often forget reading from sources like this site.
The fact that it challenges and questions some of the people here is what makes makes it really important.

#12

Billy, thank you. And thank you for your stories. I learn a lot from them.

I agree. I think I affirmed that.

The fact that it challenges and questions some of the people here is what makes makes it really important.

I (and the rest of the moderators) have not offered this place as a forum for challenging contributors. We offer it as a place to tell stories and ask questions (and interpret generously!). I’ll point out that this activity fundamentally differs from the selfsame world of academia that alienates so many of us. Challenging and debate won’t teach you anything more about someone else’s point of view. I would propose it in fact assume that you understand someone else’s point of view well enough to poke holes in it.

Would you claim that? And shouldn’t they judge that for themselves?

In any case I’ve set the moderation guidelines as mentioned. I will happily discuss changing them, but I will not make exceptions until we have come to a common new understanding.

#13

By this forum do you mean the grief and praise section or the rewild.info conversation site as a whole?

I would respectfully disagree - I think that debate allows you to get a clearer understanding of someone else’s position and of your own than you would get another way. In debate you really have to figure out what you are saying, and other people’s comments force you look critically at what you are saying - always a good thing. Debate also places you in a situation to critically look at and really get to the heart of what the other person is saying. At least that is my experience.

This really rings true for me singanothertime. They are all different experiences and all offer different lessons and I think as long as we recognize that and don’t confuse them with the actual event that we’re reading about, it all works and makes sense.

#14

I dont think debating gives us any deeper insight in anyone’s points of view. In a debate we’re busy trying to find ways and holes in the
others points of view, which often is a relatively easy thing to do. Therefore when engaged in a debate i tend to see the other persons view as something to be overcome, any deeper understanding will be fundamentally flawed by my “debate” angle on the matter. I have to figure out what im saying only because i need to lay my defenses so as to make weird dogmatic statements and false claims to truth and all that. My interests when engaged in a debate are not to understand your point of view, but to probe it, find its weaknesses and attack them. These are my experiences and im guilty! I much sooner find myself understanding someone’s points of view when engaged in a conversation that is structured more like a mutual brainstorm. Being critical without being personally committed to some kind of truth. Recognizing all participants in the conversation are working not against eachother’s arguments, but working together each offering useful insights and information much like a storyjam actually ! ! !

cheers

#15

Does anyone hear an echo in here? :slight_smile:

(Sorry, I just don’t have the energy to participate in this discussion anymore–it seems to come up in our circles as regularly as the full moon!)

#16

hey willem,
it makes me kind of sad and surprised that this forum must be so closed. i really dont want this to be an argument or debate, but if there is only one accepted philosophy here, if people are unwelcome to express any views that are outside of the one box that you accept, well that sucks. i appreciate diversity.
“challenging and debate wont teach you anything more about someone else’s point of view”.
i have learned more about you by your challenging in this thread.
anyhow, my wish is not for challenge or debate so much as an openness here for diverse views to be tolerated and accepted. otherwise these conversations seem like they will just stagnate.

#17

thanks for posting that, heyvictor. it is appreciated.

#18

[quote=“jason, post:15, topic:787”]Does anyone hear an echo in here? :slight_smile:

(Sorry, I just don’t have the energy to participate in this discussion anymore–it seems to come up in our circles as regularly as the full moon!)[/quote]

i try to understand what you wrote but it just makes me confused… What echo you speak of? Im sorry to say but it feels like a message to some kindof incrowd that actually DOES understand your post and knows what echo you speak off. I dont though and i feel left in the dark, silly. Then again im tired and vulnerable at the moment so i could just be overreacting. So dont sweat it too much its not that serious. Maybe the wine’s talking…

#19

Speaking only for myself, when I try to have genuine life experiences in the middle of Seattle I come up short. The social/built landscape around me most of the time is not willing to meet me on a truly meaningful level. I’d rather not have my everyday experiences shape how I view the world right now!

Books help remind me that there are other physical and social surroundings I can choose to work towards.

#20

I think that there are other ways to I agree that when we enter a debate defensively then, yes the result that you have experience with happens. However, I think that when you go in, yes with your own thing to say, and yes, thinking the other side is wrong, but open to being proved wrong yourself, you can come to a greater understanding. I think that when you “probe” another’s viewpoint, you really come to understand what they are saying. You also need to be able to accept criticism - if there were no arguments, no-one’s viewpoint would ever change because the flaws in their ideas would never be pointed out, sometimes everyone, myself included, needs to be told when they are wrong.

I hear what you say timeless, I wondered much the same things myself, but oh well, I haven’t had this discussion before, so whatever :).